“One of the great blessings of my life was to sit with him over the course of two years, beginning in 2007 when he was 94, and let him tell his stories,” Finney notes. “Those stories and the ones he told his first cousin Nancy Collins formed the basis of his autobiography, ‘The Archbishop Wore Combat Boots.'”

“He dreamed – big and often,” Finney says. “His teachers, including a Brother Luke at St. John’s High School in Washington, caught on to that very quickly. ‘Hannan,’ Brother Luke told him one day, ‘you get too many ideas. Skip every third idea.’

“But that’s the trouble with dreamers. They keep dreaming, and if they have enough conviction, it becomes a reality.”

The Clarion Herald website has a lengthy obituary on the archbishop and also has a number of other tributes to Archbishop Hannan, including a reflection by New Orleans Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond and some thoughts from the owner of the Saints, Tom Benson.